


New

by dashery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, New Years, Post-A6I1, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She lifts the tacky plastic circle to the light of a distant sun and finds that, indeed, the feathers are arranged in as close to a semblance of taste as any mortal could manage. She brushes a fingertip through the downy fluff near the bottom of one feather. They are all shades of orange, like her hood and robe, and—</p><p>Other Dave.</p><p>She remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lantadyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lantadyme/gifts).



Even though she knows he’s coming, Rose jumps when Dave blows a paper party horn in her ear. He’s the only one who can startle her now, and master of his craft. She may be a fully realized Seer of Light, but he’s an ascended Knight, and in the months they have spent in the Furthest Ring he’s put most of his Time into out-trolling the Trolls.

And pulling pranks on her.

Either he’s taken up his new mantle as her ectobiological brother with remarkable enthusiasm or he misses John.

Or both, she supposes.

“Happy New Year,” he says, and she knows he’s right. There’s an atomic clock ticking away in his head, burning green on black on the back of his eyelids.

“And a felicitous revolution of our former planet ‘round the sun to you, too, Strider,” she says, smiling. She quirks an eyebrow when he hands her a gaudily feathered plastic tiara with “2010” sparkling away in rhinestones. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”

He shrugs. “Made it up special just for you. You don’t want to know how many Elvis impersonators I had to bump off and strip for the ice to fill that last zero. So many bodies not even the juggatroll knew what to do with them.”

Hers is a fond smirk. “You deserve a medal for your work with endangered urban legends. Thinning the herd improves the constitution of the species.”

“You can improve what’s essentially a bunch of sweaty middle-aged dudes crooning ‘Love Me Tender’ for booze money at dive bar churches in Vegas, while idolizing some douchebag who got his hound dog down on a fourteen-year-old girl?”

“Then the city awards you the highest accolade for bringing their population to ruin.”

She twirls the tiara idly between her hands and Dave pulls a coolkid half-shrug, half-nod of acknowledgement. “Didn’t seem right, all the girls getting one and not you.”

“All the girls?”

“Don’t you know?” He knows she does, but he knows she wants to be told anyway. She can see the smug curl of her own lips in his aviators, but she knows Dave doesn’t mind. Without Aradia, they’re the only gods on the rock. He indulges her. “I told TZ about Earth New Years and she basically did a five-forty triple axel off the handle.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. The other Seer would insist we celebrate.”

He chuckles, and even now, that always takes Rose off guard. He laughs so much. Why should that still strike her as odd? “Actually, your troll’s the one who got a case of the vapors about it.”

“Kanaya?”

“Two words for you—”

“That’s a considerable change for you, Dave.”

“—fancy dress.”

Rose palms her face delicately and hears Dave laugh again. He jerks his shoulder at the tiara. “She put that together for you. I just told her what it should look like and helped her alchemize shit.”

She lifts the tacky plastic circle to the light of a distant sun and finds that, indeed, the feathers are arranged in as close to a semblance of taste as any mortal could manage. She brushes a fingertip through the downy fluff near the bottom of one feather. They are all shades of orange, like her hood and robe, and—

Other Dave.

She remembers.

The rage he couldn’t bank and how he exploded at her over Pesterchum, words rock-sliding down her screen without the punctuation she used to control her own emotions, shackle her own despair, and she remembers snapping back and then snapping, and how, when she’d woken up that first time on Derse with salt on her cheeks, he’d been there with music and movement and the reassurance that they didn’t need to talk, this time, didn’t need to hurt each other to share their hurt. And she remembers watching him cut through the same swath of ogres over and over again, ripping the game apart for her like she would herself in this session, scouring SBURB for the secrets that had taken John and Jade (blue and green and gold to their poor silver pieces), demanding their due. She remembers falling asleep while he burned streaks of red and white over LOHAC and watching his dream self twitch and sweat and grind teeth. He never really slept. He’d been awake the whole time. And on Derse, it showed. As a sprite, it showed.

She watched him, once, too far gone—already too far gone, always too far from him—to contact him. He flew gracelessly, stumbling, dripping ichor like Apollo wounded. One wing was a shredded stub and a shattered sword dangled, dead weight, from each hand. She pitied him, pitied him like her other self had in their doomed timeline, but she also felt contemptuous pride. She would do so much better. She would keep _her_ Dave from turning into that. From breaking.

Too far gone.

She saw her mother.

Now she knows.

Like all real knowledge, it does not gratify, but humbles.

She sees all this in the space of a second, a breath, as she strokes an orange feather.

“Do you think John and Jade know it’s a new year?” she asks, and she realizes she does not know, that her aspect will not grant her this.

It does let her catch the jump of muscle in Dave’s jaw before she looks down. But maybe that’s because she watched him so long, in another time.

He catches her by surprise, again, when he answers, “Sure. Davesprite’s there.”

Rose lifts her chin and sees, mirrored in his shades, a hundred billion stars strip past. She knows their light has never before touched human eyes, and never will again after that millisecond streaked across Dave’s retinas. Everything they see here, from this second until they reach the new session, is new. Everything they say will be new. Everything they create will be new.

And he wanted it.

Then and now. He wants it. Both of them want it. She knows.

She drops her gaze again, but this time it’s with a smile, and she lets Dave remove her headband and ceremoniously crown her Princess-in-Waiting of the New Year.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [lantadyme](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lantadyme), because from what I heard New Year's was pretty sucky and Lanta's been really cool about my bumbling Tumblr-stalking.


End file.
